GNU
Wget is a free utility for non-interactive download of files
from the Web. It supports HTTP, HTTPS, and
FTP protocols, as well as retrieval through
HTTP proxies.

Wget is
non-interactive, meaning that it can work in the background,
while the user is not logged on. This allows you to start a
retrieval and disconnect from the system, letting Wget
finish the work. By contrast, most of the Web browsers
require constant user’s presence, which can be a great
hindrance when transferring a lot of data.

Wget can follow
links in HTML, XHTML, and CSS
pages, to create local versions of remote web sites, fully
recreating the directory structure of the original site.
This is sometimes referred to as "recursive
downloading." While doing that, Wget respects the Robot
Exclusion Standard (/robots.txt). Wget can be
instructed to convert the links in downloaded files to point
at the local files, for offline viewing.

Wget has been
designed for robustness over slow or unstable network
connections; if a download fails due to a network problem,
it will keep retrying until the whole file has been
retrieved. If the server supports regetting, it will
instruct the server to continue the download from where it
left off.

Option
Syntax
Since Wget uses GNU getopt to process
command-line arguments, every option has a long form along
with the short one. Long options are more convenient to
remember, but take time to type. You may freely mix
different option styles, or specify options after the
command-line arguments. Thus you may write:

The space
between the option accepting an argument and the argument
may be omitted. Instead of −o log you can write
−olog.

You may put
several options that do not require arguments together,
like:

wget −drc <URL>

This is
completely equivalent to:

wget −d −r −c <URL>

Since the
options can be specified after the arguments, you may
terminate them with −−. So the following
will try to download URL−x,
reporting failure to log:

wget −o log −− −x

The options
that accept comma-separated lists all respect the convention
that specifying an empty list clears its value. This can be
useful to clear the .wgetrc settings. For instance,
if your .wgetrc sets
"exclude_directories" to
/cgi−bin, the following example will first
reset it, and then set it to exclude /~nobody and
/~somebody. You can also clear the lists in
.wgetrc.

wget −X " −X /~nobody,/~somebody

Most options
that do not accept arguments are boolean options, so
named because their state can be captured with a yes-or-no
("boolean") variable. For example,
−−follow−ftp tells Wget to follow
FTP links from HTML files and,
on the other hand, −−no−glob tells
it not to perform file globbing on FTP URLs.
A boolean option is either affirmative or
negative (beginning with −−no).
All such options share several properties.

Unless stated
otherwise, it is assumed that the default behavior is the
opposite of what the option accomplishes. For example, the
documented existence of
−−follow−ftp assumes that the
default is to not follow FTP links
from HTML pages.

Affirmative
options can be negated by prepending the
−−no− to the option name; negative
options can be negated by omitting the
−−no− prefix. This might seem
superfluous−−−if the default for an
affirmative option is to not do something, then why provide
a way to explicitly turn it off? But the startup file may in
fact change the default. For instance, using
"follow_ftp = on" in .wgetrc makes
Wget followFTP links by default, and
using −−no−follow−ftp is the
only way to restore the factory default from the command
line.

Basic
Startup Options

−V

−−version

Display the version of
Wget.

−h

−−help

Print a help message describing
all of Wget’s command-line options.

−b

−−background

Go to background immediately
after startup. If no output file is specified via the
−o, output is redirected to
wget-log.

−ecommand
−−executecommand

Execute command as if it
were a part of .wgetrc. A command thus invoked will
be executed after the commands in .wgetrc,
thus taking precedence over them. If you need to specify
more than one wgetrc command, use multiple instances of
−e.

Logging and
Input File Options
−ologfile
−−output−file=logfile

Log all messages to
logfile. The messages are normally reported to
standard error.

−alogfile
−−append−output=logfile

Append to logfile. This
is the same as −o, only it appends to
logfile instead of overwriting the old log file. If
logfile does not exist, a new file is created.

−d

−−debug

Turn on debug output, meaning
various information important to the developers of Wget if
it does not work properly. Your system administrator may
have chosen to compile Wget without debug support, in which
case −d will not work. Please note that
compiling with debug support is always
safe−−−Wget compiled with the debug
support will not print any debug info unless
requested with −d.

−q

−−quiet

Turn off Wget’s
output.

−v

−−verbose

Turn on verbose output, with
all the available data. The default output is verbose.

−nv

−−no−verbose

Turn off verbose without being
completely quiet (use −q for that), which means
that error messages and basic information still get
printed.

−−report−speed=type

Output bandwidth as
type. The only accepted value is bits.

−ifile
−−input−file=file

Read URLs from a local or
external file. If − is specified as
file, URLs are read from the standard input. (Use
./− to read from a file literally named
−.)

If this
function is used, no URLs need be present on the command
line. If there are URLs both on the command line and in an
input file, those on the command lines will be the first
ones to be retrieved. If
−−force−html is not specified, then
file should consist of a series of URLs, one per
line.

However, if you
specify −−force−html, the document
will be regarded as html. In that case you may have
problems with relative links, which you can solve either by
adding "<base
href="url">" to the
documents or by specifying
−−base=url on the command
line.

If the
file is an external one, the document will be
automatically treated as html if the Content-Type
matches text/html. Furthermore, the
file’s location will be implicitly used as base
href if none was specified.

−−input−metalink=file

Downloads files covered in
local Metalink file. Metalink version 3 and 4 are
supported.

−−keep−badhash

Keeps downloaded
Metalink’s files with a bad hash. It appends .badhash
to the name of Metalink’s files which have a checksum
mismatch, except without overwriting existing files.

−−metalink−over−http

Issues HTTP HEAD
request instead of GET and extracts Metalink
metadata from response headers. Then it switches to Metalink
download. If no valid Metalink metadata is found, it falls
back to ordinary HTTP download. Enables
Content-Type: application/metalink4+xml files
download/processing.

−−metalink−index=number

Set the Metalink
application/metalink4+xml metaurl ordinal
NUMBER. From 1 to the total number of
"application/metalink4+xml" available. Specify 0
or inf to choose the first good one. Metaurls, such
as those from a
−−metalink−over−http, may
have been sorted by priority key’s value; keep this in
mind to choose the right NUMBER.

−−preferred−location

Set preferred location for
Metalink resources. This has effect if multiple resources
with same priority are available.

−−xattr

Enable use of file
system’s extended attributes to save the original
URL and the Referer HTTP
header value if used.

Be aware that
the URL might contain private information
like access tokens or credentials.

−F

−−force−html

When input is read from a file,
force it to be treated as an HTML file. This
enables you to retrieve relative links from existing
HTML files on your local disk, by adding
"<base
href="url">" to
HTML, or using the −−base
command-line option.

−BURL
−−base=URL

Resolves relative links using
URL as the point of reference, when
reading links from an HTML file specified via
the −i/−−input−file
option (together with −−force−html,
or when the input file was fetched remotely from a server
describing it as HTML ). This is equivalent
to the presence of a "BASE" tag in the
HTML input file, with
URL as the value for the
"href" attribute.

Specify the location of a
startup file you wish to use instead of the default one(s).
Use −−no−config to disable reading of
config files. If both −−config and
−−no−config are given,
−−no−config is ignored.

−−rejected−log=logfile

Logs all URL
rejections to logfile as comma separated values. The
values include the reason of rejection, the
URL and the parent URL it was
found in.

Download
Options
−−bind−address=ADDRESS

When making client
TCP/IP connections, bind to
ADDRESS on the local machine.
ADDRESS may be specified as a hostname
or IP address. This option can be useful if
your machine is bound to multiple IPs.

−−bind−dns−address=ADDRESS

[libcares only] This address
overrides the route for DNS requests. If you
ever need to circumvent the standard settings from
/etc/resolv.conf, this option together with
−−dns−servers is your friend.
ADDRESS must be specified either as
IPv4 or IPv6 address. Wget needs to be built with libcares
for this option to be available.

−−dns−servers=ADDRESSES

[libcares only] The given
address(es) override the standard nameserver addresses, e.g.
as configured in /etc/resolv.conf.
ADDRESSES may be specified either as
IPv4 or IPv6 addresses, comma-separated. Wget needs to be
built with libcares for this option to be available.

−tnumber
−−tries=number

Set number of tries to
number. Specify 0 or inf for infinite
retrying. The default is to retry 20 times, with the
exception of fatal errors like "connection
refused" or "not found" (404), which are not
retried.

−Ofile
−−output−document=file

The documents will not be
written to the appropriate files, but all will be
concatenated together and written to file. If
− is used as file, documents will be
printed to standard output, disabling link conversion. (Use
./− to print to a file literally named
−.)

Use of
−O is not intended to mean simply
"use the name file instead of the one in the
URL ;" rather, it is analogous to shell
redirection: wget −O file http://foo is
intended to work like wget −O − http://foo
> file; file will be truncated immediately,
and all downloaded content will be written there.

For this
reason, −N (for timestamp-checking) is not
supported in combination with −O: since
file is always newly created, it will always have a
very new timestamp. A warning will be issued if this
combination is used.

Similarly,
using −r or −p with
−O may not work as you expect: Wget won’t
just download the first file to file and then
download the rest to their normal names: all
downloaded content will be placed in file. This was
disabled in version 1.11, but has been reinstated (with a
warning) in 1.11.2, as there are some cases where this
behavior can actually have some use.

A combination
with −nc is only accepted if the given output
file does not exist.

Note that a
combination with −k is only permitted when
downloading a single document, as in that case it will just
convert all relative URIs to external ones; −k
makes no sense for multiple URIs when they’re all
being downloaded to a single file; −k can be
used only when the output is a regular file.

−nc

−−no−clobber

If a file is downloaded more
than once in the same directory, Wget’s behavior
depends on a few options, including −nc. In
certain cases, the local file will be clobbered, or
overwritten, upon repeated download. In other cases it will
be preserved.

When running
Wget without −N, −nc,
−r, or −p, downloading the same
file in the same directory will result in the original copy
of file being preserved and the second copy being
named file.1. If that file is downloaded yet
again, the third copy will be named file.2,
and so on. (This is also the behavior with −nd,
even if −r or −p are in effect.)
When −nc is specified, this behavior is
suppressed, and Wget will refuse to download newer copies of
file. Therefore,
""no−clobber"" is
actually a misnomer in this
mode−−−it’s not clobbering
that’s prevented (as the numeric suffixes were already
preventing clobbering), but rather the multiple version
saving that’s prevented.

When running
Wget with −r or −p, but without
−N, −nd, or −nc,
re-downloading a file will result in the new copy simply
overwriting the old. Adding −nc will prevent
this behavior, instead causing the original version to be
preserved and any newer copies on the server to be
ignored.

When running
Wget with −N, with or without −r
or −p, the decision as to whether or not to
download a newer copy of a file depends on the local and
remote timestamp and size of the file. −nc may
not be specified at the same time as −N.

A combination
with
−O/−−output−document
is only accepted if the given output file does not
exist.

Note that when
−nc is specified, files with the suffixes
.html or .htm will be loaded from the local
disk and parsed as if they had been retrieved from the
Web.

−−backups=backups

Before (over)writing a file,
back up an existing file by adding a .1 suffix
(_1 on VMS ) to the file name. Such
backup files are rotated to .2, .3, and so on,
up to backups (and lost beyond that).

−−no−netrc

Do not try to obtain
credentials from .netrc file. By default
.netrc file is searched for credentials in case none
have been passed on command line and authentication is
required.

−c

−−continue

Continue getting a
partially-downloaded file. This is useful when you want to
finish up a download started by a previous instance of Wget,
or by another program. For instance:

If there is a
file named ls−lR.Z in the current directory,
Wget will assume that it is the first portion of the remote
file, and will ask the server to continue the retrieval from
an offset equal to the length of the local file.

Note that you
don’t need to specify this option if you just want the
current invocation of Wget to retry downloading a file
should the connection be lost midway through. This is the
default behavior. −c only affects resumption of
downloads started prior to this invocation of Wget,
and whose local files are still sitting around.

Without
−c, the previous example would just download
the remote file to ls−lR.Z.1, leaving the
truncated ls−lR.Z file alone.

If you use
−c on a non-empty file, and the server does not
support continued downloading, Wget will restart the
download from scratch and overwrite the existing file
entirely.

Beginning with
Wget 1.7, if you use −c on a file which is of
equal size as the one on the server, Wget will refuse to
download the file and print an explanatory message. The same
happens when the file is smaller on the server than locally
(presumably because it was changed on the server since your
last download attempt)−−−because
"continuing" is not meaningful, no download
occurs.

On the other
side of the coin, while using −c, any file
that’s bigger on the server than locally will be
considered an incomplete download and only
"(length(remote) − length(local))"
bytes will be downloaded and tacked onto the end of the
local file. This behavior can be desirable in certain
cases−−−for instance, you can use wget
−c to download just the new portion that’s
been appended to a data collection or log file.

However, if the
file is bigger on the server because it’s been
changed, as opposed to just appended to,
you’ll end up with a garbled file. Wget has no way of
verifying that the local file is really a valid prefix of
the remote file. You need to be especially careful of this
when using −c in conjunction with
−r, since every file will be considered as an
"incomplete download" candidate.

Another
instance where you’ll get a garbled file if you try to
use −c is if you have a lame
HTTP proxy that inserts a "transfer
interrupted" string into the local file. In the future
a "rollback" option may be added to deal with this
case.

Note that
−c only works with FTP servers
and with HTTP servers that support the
"Range" header.

−−start−pos=OFFSET

Start downloading at zero-based
position OFFSET . Offset may be
expressed in bytes, kilobytes with the ’k’
suffix, or megabytes with the ’m’ suffix,
etc.

−−start−pos
has higher precedence over −−continue.
When −−start−pos and
−−continue are both specified, wget will
emit a warning then proceed as if
−−continue was absent.

Server support
for continued download is required, otherwise
−−start−pos cannot help. See
−c for details.

−−progress=type

Select the type of the progress
indicator you wish to use. Legal indicators are
"dot" and "bar".

The
"bar" indicator is used by default. It draws an
ASCII progress bar graphics (a.k.a
"thermometer" display) indicating the status of
retrieval. If the output is not a TTY, the
"dot" bar will be used by default.

Use
−−progress=dot to switch to the
"dot" display. It traces the retrieval by printing
dots on the screen, each dot representing a fixed amount of
downloaded data.

The progress
type can also take one or more parameters. The
parameters vary based on the type selected.
Parameters to type are passed by appending them to
the type sperated by a colon (:) like this:
−−progress=type:parameter1:parameter2.

When using the
dotted retrieval, you may set the style by specifying
the type as dot:style. Different styles assign
different meaning to one dot. With the
"default" style each dot represents 1K,
there are ten dots in a cluster and 50 dots in a line. The
"binary" style has a more
"computer"−like
orientation−−−8K dots, 16−dots
clusters and 48 dots per line (which makes for 384K lines).
The "mega" style is suitable for
downloading large files−−−each dot
represents 64K retrieved, there are eight dots in a cluster,
and 48 dots on each line (so each line contains 3M). If
"mega" is not enough then you can use the
"giga" style−−−each dot
represents 1M retrieved, there are eight dots in a cluster,
and 32 dots on each line (so each line contains 32M).

With
−−progress=bar, there are currently two
possible parameters, force and noscroll.

When the output
is not a TTY, the progress bar always falls
back to "dot", even if
−−progress=bar was passed to Wget during
invocation. This behaviour can be overridden and the
"bar" output forced by using the "force"
parameter as −−progress=bar:force.

By default, the
bar style progress bar scroll the name of the file
from left to right for the file being downloaded if the
filename exceeds the maximum length allotted for its
display. In certain cases, such as with
−−progress=bar:force, one may not want
the scrolling filename in the progress bar. By passing the
"noscroll" parameter, Wget can be forced to
display as much of the filename as possible without
scrolling through it.

Note that you
can set the default style using the
"progress" command in .wgetrc.
That setting may be overridden from the command line. For
example, to force the bar output without scrolling, use
−−progress=bar:force:noscroll.

−−show−progress

Force wget to display the
progress bar in any verbosity.

By default,
wget only displays the progress bar in verbose mode. One may
however, want wget to display the progress bar on screen in
conjunction with any other verbosity modes like
−−no−verbose or
−−quiet. This is often a desired a
property when invoking wget to download several small/large
files. In such a case, wget could simply be invoked with
this parameter to get a much cleaner output on the
screen.

This option
will also force the progress bar to be printed to
stderr when used alongside the
−−logfile option.

−N

−−timestamping

Turn on time-stamping.

−−no−if−modified−since

Do not send If-Modified-Since
header in −N mode. Send preliminary
HEAD request instead. This has only effect in
−N mode.

−−no−use−server−timestamps

Don’t set the local
file’s timestamp by the one on the server.

By default,
when a file is downloaded, its timestamps are set to match
those from the remote file. This allows the use of
−−timestamping on subsequent invocations
of wget. However, it is sometimes useful to base the local
file’s timestamp on when it was actually downloaded;
for that purpose, the
−−no−use−server−timestamps
option has been provided.

−S

−−server−response

Print the headers sent by
HTTP servers and responses sent by
FTP servers.

−−spider

When invoked with this option,
Wget will behave as a Web spider, which means that it
will not download the pages, just check that they are there.
For example, you can use Wget to check your bookmarks:

wget −−spider −−force−html −i bookmarks.html

This feature
needs much more work for Wget to get close to the
functionality of real web spiders.

−T seconds
−−timeout=seconds

Set the network timeout to
seconds seconds. This is equivalent to specifying
−−dns−timeout,
−−connect−timeout, and
−−read−timeout, all at the same
time.

When
interacting with the network, Wget can check for timeout and
abort the operation if it takes too long. This prevents
anomalies like hanging reads and infinite connects. The only
timeout enabled by default is a 900−second read
timeout. Setting a timeout to 0 disables it altogether.
Unless you know what you are doing, it is best not to change
the default timeout settings.

All
timeout-related options accept decimal values, as well as
subsecond values. For example, 0.1 seconds is a legal
(though unwise) choice of timeout. Subsecond timeouts are
useful for checking server response times or for testing
network latency.

−−dns−timeout=seconds

Set the DNS
lookup timeout to seconds seconds. DNS
lookups that don’t complete within the specified time
will fail. By default, there is no timeout on
DNS lookups, other than that implemented by
system libraries.

−−connect−timeout=seconds

Set the connect timeout to
seconds seconds. TCP connections that
take longer to establish will be aborted. By default, there
is no connect timeout, other than that implemented by system
libraries.

−−read−timeout=seconds

Set the read (and write)
timeout to seconds seconds. The "time" of
this timeout refers to idle time: if, at any point in
the download, no data is received for more than the
specified number of seconds, reading fails and the download
is restarted. This option does not directly affect the
duration of the entire download.

Of course, the
remote server may choose to terminate the connection sooner
than this option requires. The default read timeout is 900
seconds.

−−limit−rate=amount

Limit the download speed to
amount bytes per second. Amount may be expressed in
bytes, kilobytes with the k suffix, or megabytes with
the m suffix. For example,
−−limit−rate=20k will limit the
retrieval rate to 20KB/s. This is useful when, for whatever
reason, you don’t want Wget to consume the entire
available bandwidth.

This option
allows the use of decimal numbers, usually in conjunction
with power suffixes; for example,
−−limit−rate=2.5k is a legal
value.

Note that Wget
implements the limiting by sleeping the appropriate amount
of time after a network read that took less time than
specified by the rate. Eventually this strategy causes the
TCP transfer to slow down to approximately
the specified rate. However, it may take some time for this
balance to be achieved, so don’t be surprised if
limiting the rate doesn’t work well with very small
files.

−wseconds
−−wait=seconds

Wait the specified number of
seconds between the retrievals. Use of this option is
recommended, as it lightens the server load by making the
requests less frequent. Instead of in seconds, the time can
be specified in minutes using the "m"
suffix, in hours using "h" suffix, or in
days using "d" suffix.

Specifying a
large value for this option is useful if the network or the
destination host is down, so that Wget can wait long enough
to reasonably expect the network error to be fixed before
the retry. The waiting interval specified by this function
is influenced by
"−−random−wait", which
see.

−−waitretry=seconds

If you don’t want Wget to
wait between every retrieval, but only between
retries of failed downloads, you can use this option. Wget
will use linear backoff, waiting 1 second after the
first failure on a given file, then waiting 2 seconds after
the second failure on that file, up to the maximum number of
seconds you specify.

By default,
Wget will assume a value of 10 seconds.

−−random−wait

Some web sites may perform log
analysis to identify retrieval programs such as Wget by
looking for statistically significant similarities in the
time between requests. This option causes the time between
requests to vary between 0.5 and 1.5 * wait seconds,
where wait was specified using the
−−wait option, in order to mask
Wget’s presence from such analysis.

A 2001 article
in a publication devoted to development on a popular
consumer platform provided code to perform this analysis on
the fly. Its author suggested blocking at the class C
address level to ensure automated retrieval programs were
blocked despite changing DHCP-supplied addresses.

The
−−random−wait option was inspired
by this ill-advised recommendation to block many unrelated
users from a web site due to the actions of one.

−−no−proxy

Don’t use proxies, even
if the appropriate *_proxy environment variable is
defined.

Note that quota
will never affect downloading a single file. So if you
specify wget −Q10k
https://example.com/ls−lR.gz, all of the
ls−lR.gz will be downloaded. The same goes even
when several URLs are specified on the command-line.
However, quota is respected when retrieving either
recursively, or from an input file. Thus you may safely type
wget −Q2m −i
sites−−−download will be aborted when
the quota is exceeded.

Setting quota
to 0 or to inf unlimits the download quota.

−−no−dns−cache

Turn off caching of
DNS lookups. Normally, Wget remembers the
IP addresses it looked up from
DNS so it doesn’t have to repeatedly
contact the DNS server for the same
(typically small) set of hosts it retrieves from. This cache
exists in memory only; a new Wget run will contact
DNS again.

However, it has
been reported that in some situations it is not desirable to
cache host names, even for the duration of a short-running
application like Wget. With this option Wget issues a new
DNS lookup (more precisely, a new call to
"gethostbyname" or
"getaddrinfo") each time it makes a new
connection. Please note that this option will not
affect caching that might be performed by the resolving
library or by an external caching layer, such as
NSCD.

If you
don’t understand exactly what this option does, you
probably won’t need it.

−−restrict−file−names=modes

Change which characters found
in remote URLs must be escaped during generation of local
filenames. Characters that are restricted by this
option are escaped, i.e. replaced with %HH, where
HH is the hexadecimal number that
corresponds to the restricted character. This option may
also be used to force all alphabetical cases to be either
lower− or uppercase.

By default,
Wget escapes the characters that are not valid or safe as
part of file names on your operating system, as well as
control characters that are typically unprintable. This
option is useful for changing these defaults, perhaps
because you are downloading to a non-native partition, or
because you want to disable escaping of the control
characters, or you want to further restrict characters to
only those in the ASCII range of values.

The
modes are a comma-separated set of text values. The
acceptable values are unix, windows,
nocontrol, ascii, lowercase, and
uppercase. The values unix and windows
are mutually exclusive (one will override the other), as are
lowercase and uppercase. Those last are
special cases, as they do not change the set of characters
that would be escaped, but rather force local file paths to
be converted either to lower− or uppercase.

When
"unix" is specified, Wget escapes the character
/ and the control characters in the ranges
0−−31 and 128−−159. This is the
default on Unix-like operating systems.

When
"windows" is given, Wget escapes the characters
\, |, /, :, ?,
", *, <, >, and the
control characters in the ranges 0−−31 and
128−−159. In addition to this, Wget in Windows
mode uses + instead of : to separate host and
port in local file names, and uses @ instead of
? to separate the query portion of the file name from
the rest. Therefore, a URL that would be
saved as www.xemacs.org:4300/search.pl?input=blah in
Unix mode would be saved as
www.xemacs.org+4300/search.pl@input=blah in Windows
mode. This mode is the default on Windows.

If you specify
nocontrol, then the escaping of the control
characters is also switched off. This option may make sense
when you are downloading URLs whose names contain
UTF−8 characters, on a system which can
save and display filenames in UTF−8
(some possible byte values used in
UTF−8 byte sequences fall in the range
of values designated by Wget as "controls").

The
ascii mode is used to specify that any bytes whose
values are outside the range of ASCII
characters (that is, greater than 127) shall be escaped.
This can be useful when saving filenames whose encoding does
not match the one used locally.

−4

−−inet4−only

−6

−−inet6−only

Force connecting to IPv4 or
IPv6 addresses. With −−inet4−only
or −4, Wget will only connect to IPv4 hosts,
ignoring AAAA records in DNS,
and refusing to connect to IPv6 addresses specified in URLs.
Conversely, with −−inet6−only or
−6, Wget will only connect to IPv6 hosts and
ignore A records and IPv4 addresses.

Neither options
should be needed normally. By default, an IPv6−aware
Wget will use the address family specified by the
host’s DNS record. If the
DNS responds with both IPv4 and IPv6
addresses, Wget will try them in sequence until it finds one
it can connect to. (Also see
"−−prefer−family"
option described below.)

These options
can be used to deliberately force the use of IPv4 or IPv6
address families on dual family systems, usually to aid
debugging or to deal with broken network configuration. Only
one of −−inet6−only and
−−inet4−only may be specified at
the same time. Neither option is available in Wget compiled
without IPv6 support.

−−prefer−family=none/IPv4/IPv6

When given a choice of several
addresses, connect to the addresses with specified address
family first. The address order returned by
DNS is used without change by default.

This avoids
spurious errors and connect attempts when accessing hosts
that resolve to both IPv6 and IPv4 addresses from IPv4
networks. For example, www.kame.net resolves to
2001:200:0:8002:203:47ff:fea5:3085 and to
203.178.141.194. When the preferred family is
"IPv4", the IPv4 address is used first;
when the preferred family is "IPv6", the
IPv6 address is used first; if the specified value is
"none", the address order returned by
DNS is used without change.

Unlike
−4 and −6, this option
doesn’t inhibit access to any address family, it only
changes the order in which the addresses are
accessed. Also note that the reordering performed by this
option is stable−−−it doesn’t
affect order of addresses of the same family. That is, the
relative order of all IPv4 addresses and of all IPv6
addresses remains intact in all cases.

−−retry−connrefused

Consider "connection
refused" a transient error and try again. Normally Wget
gives up on a URL when it is unable to
connect to the site because failure to connect is taken as a
sign that the server is not running at all and that retries
would not help. This option is for mirroring unreliable
sites whose servers tend to disappear for short periods of
time.

−−user=user
−−password=password

Specify the username
user and password password for both
FTP and HTTP file retrieval.
These parameters can be overridden using the
−−ftp−user and
−−ftp−password options for
FTP connections and the
−−http−user and
−−http−password options for
HTTP connections.

−−ask−password

Prompt for a password for each
connection established. Cannot be specified when
−−password is being used, because they
are mutually exclusive.

−−use−askpass=command

Prompt for a user and password
using the specified command. If no command is specified then
the command in the environment variable
WGET_ASKPASS is used. If
WGET_ASKPASS is not set then the command in
the environment variable SSH_ASKPASS is
used.

You can set the
default command for use-askpass in the .wgetrc. That
setting may be overridden from the command line.

−−no−iri

Turn off internationalized
URI ( IRI ) support. Use
−−iri to turn it on. IRI
support is activated by default.

You can set the
default state of IRI support using the
"iri" command in .wgetrc. That
setting may be overridden from the command line.

−−local−encoding=encoding

Force Wget to use
encoding as the default system encoding. That affects
how Wget converts URLs specified as arguments from locale to
UTF−8 for IRI
support.

Wget use the
function "nl_langinfo()" and then the
"CHARSET" environment variable to get the
locale. If it fails, ASCII is used.

You can set the
default local encoding using the
"local_encoding" command in
.wgetrc. That setting may be overridden from the
command line.

−−remote−encoding=encoding

Force Wget to use
encoding as the default remote server encoding. That
affects how Wget converts URIs found in files from remote
encoding to UTF−8 during a recursive
fetch. This options is only useful for IRI
support, for the interpretation of non-ASCII characters.

For
HTTP, remote encoding can be found in
HTTP"Content−Type"
header and in HTML"Content−Type http−equiv"
meta tag.

You can set the
default encoding using the
"remoteencoding" command in
.wgetrc. That setting may be overridden from the
command line.

−−unlink

Force Wget to unlink file
instead of clobbering existing file. This option is useful
for downloading to the directory with hardlinks.

Directory
Options

−nd

−−no−directories

Do not create a hierarchy of
directories when retrieving recursively. With this option
turned on, all files will get saved to the current
directory, without clobbering (if a name shows up more than
once, the filenames will get extensions .n).

−x

−−force−directories

The opposite of
−nd−−−create a hierarchy of
directories, even if one would not have been created
otherwise. E.g. wget −x
http://fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt will save the
downloaded file to fly.srk.fer.hr/robots.txt.

−nH

−−no−host−directories

Disable generation of
host-prefixed directories. By default, invoking Wget with
−r http://fly.srk.fer.hr/ will create a
structure of directories beginning with
fly.srk.fer.hr/. This option disables such
behavior.

−−protocol−directories

Use the protocol name as a
directory component of local file names. For example, with
this option, wget −r http://host will
save to http/host/... rather than just
to host/....

−−cut−dirs=number

Ignore number directory
components. This is useful for getting a fine-grained
control over the directory where recursive retrieval will be
saved.

Take, for
example, the directory at
ftp://ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/. If you retrieve it
with −r, it will be saved locally under
ftp.xemacs.org/pub/xemacs/. While the
−nH option can remove the
ftp.xemacs.org/ part, you are still stuck with
pub/xemacs. This is where
−−cut−dirs comes in handy; it makes
Wget not "see" number remote directory
components. Here are several examples of how
−−cut−dirs option works.

If you just
want to get rid of the directory structure, this option is
similar to a combination of −nd and
−P. However, unlike −nd,
−−cut−dirs does not lose with
subdirectories−−−for instance, with
−nH −−cut−dirs=1, a
beta/ subdirectory will be placed to
xemacs/beta, as one would expect.

−Pprefix
−−directory−prefix=prefix

Set directory prefix to
prefix. The directory prefix is the directory
where all other files and subdirectories will be saved to,
i.e. the top of the retrieval tree. The default is .
(the current directory).

HTTP
Options
−−default−page=name

Use name as the default
file name when it isn’t known (i.e., for URLs that end
in a slash), instead of index.html.

−E

−−adjust−extension

If a file of type
application/xhtml+xml or text/html is
downloaded and the URL does not end with the
regexp \.[Hh][Tt][Mm][Ll]?, this option will cause
the suffix .html to be appended to the local
filename. This is useful, for instance, when you’re
mirroring a remote site that uses .asp pages, but you
want the mirrored pages to be viewable on your stock Apache
server. Another good use for this is when you’re
downloading CGI-generated materials. A URL
like http://site.com/article.cgi?25 will be saved as
article.cgi?25.html.

Note that
filenames changed in this way will be re-downloaded every
time you re-mirror a site, because Wget can’t tell
that the local X.html file corresponds to remote
URLX (since it doesn’t yet know
that the URL produces output of type
text/html or application/xhtml+xml.

As of version
1.12, Wget will also ensure that any downloaded files of
type text/css end in the suffix .css, and the
option was renamed from
−−html−extension, to better reflect
its new behavior. The old option name is still acceptable,
but should now be considered deprecated.

As of version
1.19.2, Wget will also ensure that any downloaded files with
a "Content−Encoding" of br,
compress, deflate or gzip end in the
suffix .br, .Z, .zlib and .gz
respectively.

At some point
in the future, this option may well be expanded to include
suffixes for other types of content, including content types
that are not parsed by Wget.

−−http−user=user
−−http−password=password

Specify the username
user and password password on an
HTTP server. According to the type of the
challenge, Wget will encode them using either the
"basic" (insecure), the
"digest", or the Windows
"NTLM" authentication scheme.

Another way to
specify username and password is in the URL
itself. Either method reveals your password to anyone who
bothers to run "ps". To prevent the
passwords from being seen, use the
−−use−askpass or store them in
.wgetrc or .netrc, and make sure to protect
those files from other users with
"chmod". If the passwords are really
important, do not leave them lying in those files
either−−−edit the files and delete them
after Wget has started the download.

−−no−http−keep−alive

Turn off the
"keep-alive" feature for HTTP
downloads. Normally, Wget asks the server to keep the
connection open so that, when you download more than one
document from the same server, they get transferred over the
same TCP connection. This saves time and at
the same time reduces the load on the server.

This option is
useful when, for some reason, persistent (keep-alive)
connections don’t work for you, for example due to a
server bug or due to the inability of server-side scripts to
cope with the connections.

−−no−cache

Disable server-side cache. In
this case, Wget will send the remote server an appropriate
directive (Pragma: no-cache) to get the file from the
remote service, rather than returning the cached version.
This is especially useful for retrieving and flushing
out-of-date documents on proxy servers.

Caching is
allowed by default.

−−no−cookies

Disable the use of cookies.
Cookies are a mechanism for maintaining server-side state.
The server sends the client a cookie using the
"Set−Cookie" header, and the client
responds with the same cookie upon further requests. Since
cookies allow the server owners to keep track of visitors
and for sites to exchange this information, some consider
them a breach of privacy. The default is to use cookies;
however, storing cookies is not on by default.

−−load−cookiesfile

Load cookies from file
before the first HTTP retrieval. file
is a textual file in the format originally used by
Netscape’s cookies.txt file.

You will
typically use this option when mirroring sites that require
that you be logged in to access some or all of their
content. The login process typically works by the web server
issuing an HTTP cookie upon receiving and
verifying your credentials. The cookie is then resent by the
browser when accessing that part of the site, and so proves
your identity.

Mirroring such
a site requires Wget to send the same cookies your browser
sends when communicating with the site. This is achieved by
−−load−cookies−−−simply
point Wget to the location of the cookies.txt file,
and it will send the same cookies your browser would send in
the same situation. Different browsers keep textual cookie
files in different locations:
"Netscape 4.x."

The cookies are in
~/.netscape/cookies.txt.

"Mozilla and Netscape
6.x."

Mozilla’s cookie file is
also named cookies.txt, located somewhere under
~/.mozilla, in the directory of your profile. The
full path usually ends up looking somewhat like
~/.mozilla/default/some-weird-string/cookies.txt.

"Internet
Explorer."

You can produce a cookie file
Wget can use by using the File menu, Import and Export,
Export Cookies. This has been tested with Internet Explorer
5; it is not guaranteed to work with earlier versions.

"Other browsers."

If you are using a different
browser to create your cookies,
−−load−cookies will only work if
you can locate or produce a cookie file in the Netscape
format that Wget expects.

If you cannot
use −−load−cookies, there might
still be an alternative. If your browser supports a
"cookie manager", you can use it to view the
cookies used when accessing the site you’re mirroring.
Write down the name and value of the cookie, and manually
instruct Wget to send those cookies, bypassing the
"official" cookie support:

wget −−no−cookies −−header "Cookie: <name>=<value>"

−−save−cookiesfile

Save cookies to file
before exiting. This will not save cookies that have expired
or that have no expiry time (so-called "session
cookies"), but also see
−−keep−session−cookies.

−−keep−session−cookies

When specified, causes
−−save−cookies to also save session
cookies. Session cookies are normally not saved because they
are meant to be kept in memory and forgotten when you exit
the browser. Saving them is useful on sites that require you
to log in or to visit the home page before you can access
some pages. With this option, multiple Wget runs are
considered a single browser session as far as the site is
concerned.

Since the
cookie file format does not normally carry session cookies,
Wget marks them with an expiry timestamp of 0. Wget’s
−−load−cookies recognizes those as
session cookies, but it might confuse other browsers. Also
note that cookies so loaded will be treated as other session
cookies, which means that if you want
−−save−cookies to preserve them
again, you must use
−−keep−session−cookies
again.

−−ignore−length

Unfortunately, some
HTTP servers ( CGI programs,
to be more precise) send out bogus
"Content−Length" headers, which
makes Wget go wild, as it thinks not all the document was
retrieved. You can spot this syndrome if Wget retries
getting the same document again and again, each time
claiming that the (otherwise normal) connection has closed
on the very same byte.

With this
option, Wget will ignore the
"Content−Length"
header−−−as if it never existed.

−−header=header-line

Send header-line along
with the rest of the headers in each HTTP
request. The supplied header is sent as-is, which means it
must contain name and value separated by colon, and must not
contain newlines.

You may define
more than one additional header by specifying
−−header more than once.

In versions of
Wget prior to 1.10 such use of −−header
caused sending of duplicate headers.

−−compression=type

Choose the type of compression
to be used. Legal values are auto, gzip and
none.

If auto
or gzip are specified, Wget asks the server to
compress the file using the gzip compression format. If the
server compresses the file and responds with the
"Content−Encoding" header field set
appropriately, the file will be decompressed
automatically.

If none
is specified, wget will not ask the server to compress the
file and will not decompress any server responses. This is
the default.

Compression
support is currently experimental. In case it is turned on,
please report any bugs to
"bug−wget [AT] gnu.org".

−−max−redirect=number

Specifies the maximum number of
redirections to follow for a resource. The default is 20,
which is usually far more than necessary. However, on those
occasions where you want to allow more (or fewer), this is
the option to use.

−−proxy−user=user
−−proxy−password=password

Specify the username
user and password password for authentication
on a proxy server. Wget will encode them using the
"basic" authentication scheme.

Security
considerations similar to those with
−−http−password pertain here as
well.

−−referer=url

Include ’Referer:
url’ header in HTTP request.
Useful for retrieving documents with server-side processing
that assume they are always being retrieved by interactive
web browsers and only come out properly when Referer is set
to one of the pages that point to them.

−−save−headers

Save the headers sent by the
HTTP server to the file, preceding the actual
contents, with an empty line as the separator.

−Uagent-string
−−user−agent=agent-string

Identify as agent-string
to the HTTP server.

The
HTTP protocol allows the clients to identify
themselves using a "User−Agent"
header field. This enables distinguishing the
WWW software, usually for statistical
purposes or for tracing of protocol violations. Wget
normally identifies as Wget/version,
version being the current version number of Wget.

However, some
sites have been known to impose the policy of tailoring the
output according to the
"User−Agent"−supplied
information. While this is not such a bad idea in theory, it
has been abused by servers denying information to clients
other than (historically) Netscape or, more frequently,
Microsoft Internet Explorer. This option allows you to
change the "User−Agent" line issued
by Wget. Use of this option is discouraged, unless you
really know what you are doing.

Use POST as the
method for all HTTP requests and send the
specified data in the request body.
−−post−data sends string as
data, whereas −−post−file sends the
contents of file. Other than that, they work in
exactly the same way. In particular, they both expect
content of the form
"key1=value1&key2=value2", with
percent-encoding for special characters; the only difference
is that one expects its content as a command-line parameter
and the other accepts its content from a file. In
particular, −−post−file is
not for transmitting files as form attachments: those
must appear as "key=value" data (with
appropriate percent-coding) just like everything else. Wget
does not currently support
"multipart/form−data" for
transmitting POST data; only
"application/x−www−form−urlencoded".
Only one of −−post−data and
−−post−file should be
specified.

Please note
that wget does not require the content to be of the form
"key1=value1&key2=value2", and
neither does it test for it. Wget will simply transmit
whatever data is provided to it. Most servers however expect
the POST data to be in the above format when
processing HTML Forms.

When sending a
POST request using the
−−post−file option, Wget treats the
file as a binary file and will send every character in the
POST request without stripping trailing
newline or formfeed characters. Any other control characters
in the text will also be sent as-is in the
POST request.

Please be aware
that Wget needs to know the size of the POST
data in advance. Therefore the argument to
"−−post−file" must be a
regular file; specifying a FIFO or something
like /dev/stdin won’t work. It’s not
quite clear how to work around this limitation inherent in
HTTP/1.0. Although HTTP/1.1
introduces chunked transfer that doesn’t
require knowing the request length in advance, a client
can’t use chunked unless it knows it’s talking
to an HTTP/1.1 server. And it can’t
know that until it receives a response, which in turn
requires the request to have been completed -- a
chicken-and-egg problem.

Note: As of
version 1.15 if Wget is redirected after the
POST request is completed, its behaviour will
depend on the response code returned by the server. In case
of a 301 Moved Permanently, 302 Moved Temporarily or 307
Temporary Redirect, Wget will, in accordance with
RFC2616, continue to send a
POST request. In case a server wants the
client to change the Request method upon redirection, it
should send a 303 See Other response code.

This example
shows how to log in to a server using POST
and then proceed to download the desired pages, presumably
only accessible to authorized users:

If the server
is using session cookies to track user authentication, the
above will not work because
−−save−cookies will not save them
(and neither will browsers) and the cookies.txt file
will be empty. In that case use
−−keep−session−cookies along
with −−save−cookies to force saving
of session cookies.

−−method=HTTP-Method

For the purpose of RESTful
scripting, Wget allows sending of other HTTP
Methods without the need to explicitly set them using
−−header=Header−Line. Wget will use
whatever string is passed to it after
−−method as the HTTP
Method to the server.

−−body−data=Data-String
−−body−file=Data-File

Must be set when additional
data needs to be sent to the server along with the Method
specified using −−method.
−−body−data sends string as
data, whereas −−body−file sends the
contents of file. Other than that, they work in
exactly the same way.

Currently,
−−body−file is not for
transmitting files as a whole. Wget does not currently
support "multipart/form−data" for
transmitting data; only
"application/x−www−form−urlencoded".
In the future, this may be changed so that wget sends the
−−body−file as a complete file
instead of sending its contents to the server. Please be
aware that Wget needs to know the contents of
BODY Data in advance, and hence the argument
to −−body−file should be a regular
file. See −−post−file for a more
detailed explanation. Only one of
−−body−data and
−−body−file should be
specified.

If Wget is
redirected after the request is completed, Wget will suspend
the current method and send a GET request
till the redirection is completed. This is true for all
redirection response codes except 307 Temporary Redirect
which is used to explicitly specify that the request method
should not change. Another exception is when the
method is set to "POST", in which case
the redirection rules specified under
−−post−data are followed.

−−content−disposition

If this is set to on,
experimental (not fully-functional) support for
"Content−Disposition" headers is
enabled. This can currently result in extra round-trips to
the server for a "HEAD" request, and is
known to suffer from a few bugs, which is why it is not
currently enabled by default.

This option is
useful for some file-downloading CGI programs
that use "Content−Disposition"
headers to describe what the name of a downloaded file
should be.

When combined
with −−metalink−over−http and
−−trust−server−names, a
Content-Type: application/metalink4+xml file is named
using the "Content−Disposition"
filename field, if available.

−−content−on−error

If this is set to on, wget will
not skip the content when the server responds with a http
status code that indicates error.

−−trust−server−names

If this is set, on a redirect,
the local file name will be based on the redirection
URL. By default the local file name is based
on the original URL. When doing recursive
retrieving this can be helpful because in many web sites
redirected URLs correspond to an underlying file structure,
while link URLs do not.

−−auth−no−challenge

If this option is given, Wget
will send Basic HTTP authentication
information (plaintext username and password) for all
requests, just like Wget 1.10.2 and prior did by
default.

Use of this
option is not recommended, and is intended only to support
some few obscure servers, which never send
HTTP authentication challenges, but accept
unsolicited auth info, say, in addition to form-based
authentication.

−−retry−on−host−error

Consider host errors, such as
"Temporary failure in name resolution", as
non-fatal, transient errors.

−−retry−on−http−error=code[,code,...]

Consider given
HTTP response codes as non-fatal, transient
errors. Supply a comma-separated list of 3−digit
HTTP response codes as argument. Useful to
work around special circumstances where retries are
required, but the server responds with an error code
normally not retried by Wget. Such errors might be 503
(Service Unavailable) and 429 (Too Many Requests). Retries
enabled by this option are performed subject to the normal
retry timing and retry count limitations of Wget.

Using this
option is intended to support special use cases only and is
generally not recommended, as it can force retries even in
cases where the server is actually trying to decrease its
load. Please use wisely and only if you know what you are
doing.

HTTPS
( SSL/TLS ) Options
To support encrypted HTTP (
HTTPS ) downloads, Wget must be compiled with
an external SSL library. The current default
is GnuTLS. In addition, Wget also supports
HSTS ( HTTP Strict Transport
Security). If Wget is compiled without SSL
support, none of these options are available.
−−secure−protocol=protocol

Choose the secure protocol to
be used. Legal values are auto, SSLv2,
SSLv3, TLSv1, TLSv1_1, TLSv1_2,
TLSv1_3 and PFS . If
auto is used, the SSL library is given
the liberty of choosing the appropriate protocol
automatically, which is achieved by sending a TLSv1
greeting. This is the default.

Specifying
SSLv2, SSLv3, TLSv1, TLSv1_1,
TLSv1_2 or TLSv1_3 forces the use of the
corresponding protocol. This is useful when talking to old
and buggy SSL server implementations that
make it hard for the underlying SSL library
to choose the correct protocol version. Fortunately, such
servers are quite rare.

Specifying
PFS enforces the use of the so-called
Perfect Forward Security cipher suites. In short,
PFS adds security by creating a one-time key
for each SSL connection. It has a bit more
CPU impact on client and server. We use known
to be secure ciphers (e.g. no MD4 ) and the
TLS protocol. This mode also explicitly
excludes non-PFS key exchange methods, such as
RSA.

−−https−only

When in recursive mode, only
HTTPS links are followed.

−−ciphers

Set the cipher list string.
Typically this string sets the cipher suites and other
SSL/TLS options that the user wish should be
used, in a set order of preference (GnuTLS calls it
’priority string’). This string will be fed
verbatim to the SSL/TLS engine (OpenSSL or
GnuTLS) and hence its format and syntax is dependant on
that. Wget will not process or manipulate it in any way.
Refer to the OpenSSL or GnuTLS documentation for more
information.

−−no−check−certificate

Don’t check the server
certificate against the available certificate authorities.
Also don’t require the URL host name to
match the common name presented by the certificate.

As of Wget
1.10, the default is to verify the server’s
certificate against the recognized certificate authorities,
breaking the SSL handshake and aborting the
download if the verification fails. Although this provides
more secure downloads, it does break interoperability with
some sites that worked with previous Wget versions,
particularly those using self-signed, expired, or otherwise
invalid certificates. This option forces an
"insecure" mode of operation that turns the
certificate verification errors into warnings and allows you
to proceed.

If you
encounter "certificate verification" errors or
ones saying that "common name doesn’t match
requested host name", you can use this option to bypass
the verification and proceed with the download. Only use
this option if you are otherwise convinced of the
site’s authenticity, or if you really don’t care
about the validity of its certificate. It is almost
always a bad idea not to check the certificates when
transmitting confidential or important data. For
self−signed/internal certificates, you should download
the certificate and verify against that instead of forcing
this insecure mode. If you are really sure of not desiring
any certificate verification, you can specify
−−check−certificate=quiet to tell wget to
not print any warning about invalid certificates, albeit in
most cases this is the wrong thing to do.

−−certificate=file

Use the client certificate
stored in file. This is needed for servers that are
configured to require certificates from the clients that
connect to them. Normally a certificate is not required and
this switch is optional.

−−certificate−type=type

Specify the type of the client
certificate. Legal values are PEM
(assumed by default) and DER , also
known as ASN1 .

−−private−key=file

Read the private key from
file. This allows you to provide the private key in a
file separate from the certificate.

−−private−key−type=type

Specify the type of the private
key. Accepted values are PEM (the
default) and DER .

−−ca−certificate=file

Use file as the file
with the bundle of certificate authorities ("
CA" ) to verify the peers. The
certificates must be in PEM format.

Without this
option Wget looks for CA certificates at the
system-specified locations, chosen at OpenSSL installation
time.

−−ca−directory=directory

Specifies directory containing
CA certificates in PEM format.
Each file contains one CA certificate, and
the file name is based on a hash value derived from the
certificate. This is achieved by processing a certificate
directory with the "c_rehash" utility
supplied with OpenSSL. Using
−−ca−directory is more efficient
than −−ca−certificate when many
certificates are installed because it allows Wget to fetch
certificates on demand.

Without this
option Wget looks for CA certificates at the
system-specified locations, chosen at OpenSSL installation
time.

−−crl−file=file

Specifies a CRL
file in file. This is needed for certificates that
have been revocated by the CAs.

−−pinnedpubkey=file/hashes

Tells wget to use the specified
public key file (or hashes) to verify the peer. This can be
a path to a file which contains a single public key in
PEM or DER format, or any
number of base64 encoded sha256 hashes preceded by
"sha256//" and separated by ";"

When
negotiating a TLS or SSL
connection, the server sends a certificate indicating its
identity. A public key is extracted from this certificate
and if it does not exactly match the public key(s) provided
to this option, wget will abort the connection before
sending or receiving any data.

−−random−file=file

[OpenSSL and LibreSSL only] Use
file as the source of random data for seeding the
pseudo-random number generator on systems without
/dev/urandom.

On such systems
the SSL library needs an external source of
randomness to initialize. Randomness may be provided by
EGD (see −−egd−file
below) or read from an external source specified by the
user. If this option is not specified, Wget looks for random
data in $RANDFILE or, if that is unset, in
$HOME/.rnd.

If you’re
getting the "Could not seed OpenSSL PRNG
; disabling SSL." error, you should
provide random data using some of the methods described
above.

−−egd−file=file

[OpenSSL only] Use file
as the EGD socket. EGD stands
for Entropy Gathering Daemon, a user-space program
that collects data from various unpredictable system sources
and makes it available to other programs that might need it.
Encryption software, such as the SSL library,
needs sources of non-repeating randomness to seed the random
number generator used to produce cryptographically strong
keys.

OpenSSL allows
the user to specify his own source of entropy using the
"RAND_FILE" environment variable. If this
variable is unset, or if the specified file does not produce
enough randomness, OpenSSL will read random data from
EGD socket specified using this option.

If this option
is not specified (and the equivalent startup command is not
used), EGD is never contacted.
EGD is not needed on modern Unix systems that
support /dev/urandom.

−−no−hsts

Wget supports
HSTS ( HTTP Strict Transport
Security, RFC 6797 ) by default. Use
−−no−hsts to make Wget act as a
non-HSTS-compliant UA. As a consequence, Wget
would ignore all the
"Strict−Transport−Security"
headers, and would not enforce any existing
HSTS policy.

−−hsts−file=file

By default, Wget stores its
HSTS database in ~/.wget−hsts.
You can use −−hsts−file to override
this. Wget will use the supplied file as the
HSTS database. Such file must conform to the
correct HSTS database format used by Wget. If
Wget cannot parse the provided file, the behaviour is
unspecified.

The
Wget’s HSTS database is a plain text
file. Each line contains an HSTS entry (ie. a
site that has issued a
"Strict−Transport−Security"
header and that therefore has specified a concrete
HSTS policy to be applied). Lines starting
with a dash ("#") are ignored by Wget.
Please note that in spite of this convenient
human-readability hand-hacking the HSTS
database is generally not a good idea.

An
HSTS entry line consists of several fields
separated by one or more whitespace:

The
hostname and port fields indicate the hostname
and port to which the given HSTS policy
applies. The port field may be zero, and it will, in
most of the cases. That means that the port number will not
be taken into account when deciding whether such
HSTS policy should be applied on a given
request (only the hostname will be evaluated). When
port is different to zero, both the target hostname
and the port will be evaluated and the HSTS
policy will only be applied if both of them match. This
feature has been included for testing/development purposes
only. The Wget testsuite (in testenv/) creates
HSTS databases with explicit ports with the
purpose of ensuring Wget’s correct behaviour. Applying
HSTS policies to ports other than the default
ones is discouraged by RFC 6797 (see Appendix
B "Differences between HSTS Policy and
Same-Origin Policy"). Thus, this functionality should
not be used in production environments and port will
typically be zero. The last three fields do what they are
expected to. The field include_subdomains can either
be 1 or 0 and it signals whether the
subdomains of the target domain should be part of the given
HSTS policy as well. The created and
max-age fields hold the timestamp values of when such
entry was created (first seen by Wget) and the HSTS-defined
value ’max−age’, which states how long
should that HSTS policy remain active,
measured in seconds elapsed since the timestamp stored in
created. Once that time has passed, that
HSTS policy will no longer be valid and will
eventually be removed from the database.

If you supply
your own HSTS database via
−−hsts−file, be aware that Wget may
modify the provided file if any change occurs between the
HSTS policies requested by the remote servers
and those in the file. When Wget exists, it effectively
updates the HSTS database by rewriting the
database file with the new entries.

If the supplied
file does not exist, Wget will create one. This file will
contain the new HSTS entries. If no
HSTS entries were generated (no
"Strict−Transport−Security"
headers were sent by any of the servers) then no file will
be created, not even an empty one. This behaviour applies to
the default database file (~/.wget−hsts) as
well: it will not be created until some server enforces an
HSTS policy.

Care is taken
not to override possible changes made by other Wget
processes at the same time over the HSTS
database. Before dumping the updated HSTS
entries on the file, Wget will re-read it and merge the
changes.

Using a custom
HSTS database and/or modifying an existing
one is discouraged. For more information about the potential
security threats arised from such practice, see section 14
"Security Considerations" of RFC
6797, specially section 14.9 "Creative
Manipulation of HSTS Policy Store".

−−warc−file=file

Use file as the
destination WARC file.

−−warc−header=string

Use string into as the
warcinfo record.

−−warc−max−size=size

Set the maximum size of the
WARC files to size.

−−warc−cdx

Write CDX index
files.

−−warc−dedup=file

Do not store records listed in
this CDX file.

−−no−warc−compression

Do not compress
WARC files with GZIP.

−−no−warc−digests

Do not calculate
SHA1 digests.

−−no−warc−keep−log

Do not store the log file in a
WARC record.

−−warc−tempdir=dir

Specify the location for
temporary files created by the WARC
writer.

FTP
Options
−−ftp−user=user
−−ftp−password=password

Specify the username
user and password password on an
FTP server. Without this, or the
corresponding startup option, the password defaults to
−wget@, normally used for anonymous
FTP.

Another way to
specify username and password is in the URL
itself. Either method reveals your password to anyone who
bothers to run "ps". To prevent the
passwords from being seen, store them in .wgetrc or
.netrc, and make sure to protect those files from
other users with "chmod". If the
passwords are really important, do not leave them lying in
those files either−−−edit the files and
delete them after Wget has started the download.

−−no−remove−listing

Don’t remove the
temporary .listing files generated by
FTP retrievals. Normally, these files contain
the raw directory listings received from FTP
servers. Not removing them can be useful for debugging
purposes, or when you want to be able to easily check on the
contents of remote server directories (e.g. to verify that a
mirror you’re running is complete).

Note that even
though Wget writes to a known filename for this file, this
is not a security hole in the scenario of a user making
.listing a symbolic link to /etc/passwd or
something and asking "root" to run Wget
in his or her directory. Depending on the options used,
either Wget will refuse to write to .listing, making
the globbing/recursion/time−stamping operation fail,
or the symbolic link will be deleted and replaced with the
actual .listing file, or the listing will be written
to a .listing.number file.

Even though
this situation isn’t a problem, though,
"root" should never run Wget in a
non-trusted user’s directory. A user could do
something as simple as linking index.html to
/etc/passwd and asking "root" to
run Wget with −N or −r so the file
will be overwritten.

−−no−glob

Turn off FTP
globbing. Globbing refers to the use of shell-like special
characters (wildcards), like *, ?,
[ and ] to retrieve more than one file from
the same directory at once, like:

By default,
globbing will be turned on if the URL
contains a globbing character. This option may be used to
turn globbing on or off permanently.

You may have to
quote the URL to protect it from being
expanded by your shell. Globbing makes Wget look for a
directory listing, which is system-specific. This is why it
currently works only with Unix FTP servers
(and the ones emulating Unix "ls"
output).

−−no−passive−ftp

Disable the use of the
passiveFTP transfer mode. Passive
FTP mandates that the client connect to the
server to establish the data connection rather than the
other way around.

If the machine
is connected to the Internet directly, both passive and
active FTP should work equally well. Behind
most firewall and NAT configurations passive
FTP has a better chance of working. However,
in some rare firewall configurations, active
FTP actually works when passive
FTP doesn’t. If you suspect this to be
the case, use this option, or set
"passive_ftp=off" in your init file.

−−preserve−permissions

Preserve remote file
permissions instead of permissions set by umask.

−−retr−symlinks

By default, when retrieving
FTP directories recursively and a symbolic
link is encountered, the symbolic link is traversed and the
pointed-to files are retrieved. Currently, Wget does not
traverse symbolic links to directories to download them
recursively, though this feature may be added in the
future.

When
−−retr−symlinks=no is specified,
the linked-to file is not downloaded. Instead, a matching
symbolic link is created on the local filesystem. The
pointed-to file will not be retrieved unless this recursive
retrieval would have encountered it separately and
downloaded it anyway. This option poses a security risk
where a malicious FTP Server may cause Wget
to write to files outside of the intended directories
through a specially crafted .LISTING file.

Note that when
retrieving a file (not a directory) because it was specified
on the command-line, rather than because it was recursed to,
this option has no effect. Symbolic links are always
traversed in this case.

FTPS
Options
−−ftps−implicit

This option tells Wget to use
FTPS implicitly. Implicit FTPS
consists of initializing SSL/TLS from the
very beginning of the control connection. This option does
not send an "AUTH TLS" command: it
assumes the server speaks FTPS and directly
starts an SSL/TLS connection. If the attempt
is successful, the session continues just like regular
FTPS ("PBSZ" and
"PROT" are sent, etc.). Implicit
FTPS is no longer a requirement for
FTPS implementations, and thus many servers
may not support it. If
−−ftps−implicit is passed and no
explicit port number specified, the default port for
implicit FTPS, 990, will be used, instead of
the default port for the "normal" (explicit)
FTPS which is the same as that of FTP,
21.

−−no−ftps−resume−ssl

Do not resume the
SSL/TLS session in the data channel. When
starting a data connection, Wget tries to resume the
SSL/TLS session previously started in the
control connection. SSL/TLS session
resumption avoids performing an entirely new handshake by
reusing the SSL/TLS parameters of a previous
session. Typically, the FTPS servers want it
that way, so Wget does this by default. Under rare
circumstances however, one might want to start an entirely
new SSL/TLS session in every data connection.
This is what
−−no−ftps−resume−ssl is
for.

−−ftps−clear−data−connection

All the data connections will
be in plain text. Only the control connection will be under
SSL/TLS. Wget will send a "PROT
C" command to achieve this, which must be approved
by the server.

−−ftps−fallback−to−ftp

Fall back to FTP
if FTPS is not supported by the target
server. For security reasons, this option is not asserted by
default. The default behaviour is to exit with an error. If
a server does not successfully reply to the initial
"AUTH TLS" command, or in the case of
implicit FTPS, if the initial
SSL/TLS connection attempt is rejected, it is
considered that such server does not support
FTPS.

Recursive
Retrieval Options

−r

−−recursive

Turn on recursive retrieving.
The default maximum depth is 5.

−ldepth
−−level=depth

Specify recursion maximum depth
level depth.

−−delete−after

This option tells Wget to
delete every single file it downloads, after having
done so. It is useful for pre-fetching popular pages through
a proxy, e.g.:

The
−r option is to retrieve recursively, and
−nd to not create directories.

Note that
−−delete−after deletes files on the
local machine. It does not issue the
DELE command to remote
FTP sites, for instance. Also note that when
−−delete−after is specified,
−−convert−links is ignored, so
.orig files are simply not created in the first
place.

−k

−−convert−links

After the download is complete,
convert the links in the document to make them suitable for
local viewing. This affects not only the visible hyperlinks,
but any part of the document that links to external content,
such as embedded images, links to style sheets, hyperlinks
to non-HTML content, etc.

Each link will
be changed in one of the two ways:

•

The links to files that have been downloaded by Wget
will be changed to refer to the file they point to as a
relative link.

Example: if the
downloaded file /foo/doc.html links to
/bar/img.gif, also downloaded, then the link in
doc.html will be modified to point to
../bar/img.gif. This kind of transformation works
reliably for arbitrary combinations of directories.

•

The links to files that have not
been downloaded by Wget will be changed to include host name
and absolute path of the location they point to.

Example: if the
downloaded file /foo/doc.html links to
/bar/img.gif (or to ../bar/img.gif), then the
link in doc.html will be modified to point to
http://hostname/bar/img.gif.

Because of
this, local browsing works reliably: if a linked file was
downloaded, the link will refer to its local name; if it was
not downloaded, the link will refer to its full Internet
address rather than presenting a broken link. The fact that
the former links are converted to relative links ensures
that you can move the downloaded hierarchy to another
directory.

Note that only
at the end of the download can Wget know which links have
been downloaded. Because of that, the work done by
−k will be performed at the end of all the
downloads.

−−convert−file−only

This option converts only the
filename part of the URLs, leaving the rest of the URLs
untouched. This filename part is sometimes referred to as
the "basename", although we avoid that term here
in order not to cause confusion.

It works
particularly well in conjunction with
−−adjust−extension, although this
coupling is not enforced. It proves useful to populate
Internet caches with files downloaded from different
hosts.

Example: if
some link points to //foo.com/bar.cgi?xyz with
−−adjust−extension asserted and its
local destination is intended to be
./foo.com/bar.cgi?xyz.css, then the link would be
converted to //foo.com/bar.cgi?xyz.css. Note that
only the filename part has been modified. The rest of the
URL has been left untouched, including the
net path ("//") which would otherwise be
processed by Wget and converted to the effective scheme (ie.
"http://&quot;).

−K

−−backup−converted

When converting a file, back up
the original version with a .orig suffix. Affects the
behavior of −N.

−m

−−mirror

Turn on options suitable for
mirroring. This option turns on recursion and time-stamping,
sets infinite recursion depth and keeps FTP
directory listings. It is currently equivalent to
−r −N −l inf
−−no−remove−listing.

−p

−−page−requisites

This option causes Wget to
download all the files that are necessary to properly
display a given HTML page. This includes such
things as inlined images, sounds, and referenced
stylesheets.

Ordinarily,
when downloading a single HTML page, any
requisite documents that may be needed to display it
properly are not downloaded. Using −r together
with −l can help, but since Wget does not
ordinarily distinguish between external and inlined
documents, one is generally left with "leaf
documents" that are missing their requisites.

For instance,
say document 1.html contains an
"<IMG>" tag referencing
1.gif and an "<A>" tag
pointing to external document 2.html. Say that
2.html is similar but that its image is 2.gif
and it links to 3.html. Say this continues up to some
arbitrarily high number.

then
1.html, 1.gif, 2.html, 2.gif,
and 3.html will be downloaded. As you can see,
3.html is without its requisite 3.gif because
Wget is simply counting the number of hops (up to 2) away
from 1.html in order to determine where to stop the
recursion. However, with this command:

would download
just 1.html and 1.gif, but unfortunately this
is not the case, because −l 0 is equivalent to
−l inf−−−that is, infinite
recursion. To download a single HTML page (or
a handful of them, all specified on the command-line or in a
−iURL input file) and its (or
their) requisites, simply leave off −r and
−l:

Note that Wget
will behave as if −r had been specified, but
only that single page and its requisites will be downloaded.
Links from that page to external documents will not be
followed. Actually, to download a single page and all its
requisites (even if they exist on separate websites), and
make sure the lot displays properly locally, this author
likes to use a few options in addition to
−p:

To finish off
this topic, it’s worth knowing that Wget’s idea
of an external document link is any URL
specified in an "<A>" tag, an
"<AREA>" tag, or a
"<LINK>" tag other than
"<LINK
REL="stylesheet">".

−−strict−comments

Turn on strict parsing of
HTML comments. The default is to terminate
comments at the first occurrence of
−−>.

According to
specifications, HTML comments are expressed
as SGMLdeclarations. Declaration is
special markup that begins with <! and ends with
>, such as <!DOCTYPE ...>, that may
contain comments between a pair of −−
delimiters. HTML comments are "empty
declarations", SGML declarations without
any non-comment text. Therefore,
<!−−foo−−> is a valid
comment, and so is <!−−one--
−−two−−>, but
<!−−1−−2−−>
is not.

On the other
hand, most HTML writers don’t perceive
comments as anything other than text delimited with
<!−− and −−>,
which is not quite the same. For example, something like
<!−−−−−−−−−−−−>
works as a valid comment as long as the number of dashes is
a multiple of four (!). If not, the comment technically
lasts until the next −−, which may be at
the other end of the document. Because of this, many popular
browsers completely ignore the specification and implement
what users have come to expect: comments delimited with
<!−− and
−−>.

Until version
1.9, Wget interpreted comments strictly, which resulted in
missing links in many web pages that displayed fine in
browsers, but had the misfortune of containing non-compliant
comments. Beginning with version 1.9, Wget has joined the
ranks of clients that implements "naive" comments,
terminating each comment at the first occurrence of
−−>.

If, for
whatever reason, you want strict comment parsing, use this
option to turn it on.

Specify comma-separated lists
of file name suffixes or patterns to accept or reject. Note
that if any of the wildcard characters, *, ?,
[ or ], appear in an element of acclist
or rejlist, it will be treated as a pattern, rather
than a suffix. In this case, you have to enclose the pattern
into quotes to prevent your shell from expanding it, like in
−A "*.mp3" or −A
’*.mp3’.

−−accept−regexurlregex
−−reject−regexurlregex

Specify a regular expression to
accept or reject the complete URL.

−−regex−typeregextype

Specify the regular expression
type. Possible types are posix or pcre. Note
that to be able to use pcre type, wget has to be
compiled with libpcre support.

−Ddomain-list
−−domains=domain-list

Set domains to be followed.
domain-list is a comma-separated list of domains.
Note that it does not turn on −H.

−−exclude−domainsdomain-list

Specify the domains that are
not to be followed.

−−follow−ftp

Follow FTP links
from HTML documents. Without this option,
Wget will ignore all the FTP links.

−−follow−tags=list

Wget has an internal table of
HTML tag / attribute pairs that it considers
when looking for linked documents during a recursive
retrieval. If a user wants only a subset of those tags to be
considered, however, he or she should be specify such tags
in a comma-separated list with this option.

−−ignore−tags=list

This is the opposite of the
−−follow−tags option. To skip
certain HTML tags when recursively looking
for documents to download, specify them in a comma-separated
list.

In the past,
this option was the best bet for downloading a single page
and its requisites, using a command-line like:

However, the
author of this option came across a page with tags like
"<LINK REL="home"
HREF="/">" and came to the
realization that specifying tags to ignore was not enough.
One can’t just tell Wget to ignore
"<LINK>", because then stylesheets
will not be downloaded. Now the best bet for downloading a
single page and its requisites is the dedicated
−−page−requisites option.

−−ignore−case

Ignore case when matching files
and directories. This influences the behavior of −R,
−A, −I, and −X options, as well as
globbing implemented when downloading from
FTP sites. For example, with this option,
−A "*.txt" will match
file1.txt, but also file2.TXT,
file3.TxT, and so on. The quotes in the example are
to prevent the shell from expanding the pattern.

−H

−−span−hosts

Enable spanning across hosts
when doing recursive retrieving.

−L

−−relative

Follow relative links only.
Useful for retrieving a specific home page without any
distractions, not even those from the same hosts.

−Ilist
−−include−directories=list

Specify a comma-separated list
of directories you wish to follow when downloading. Elements
of list may contain wildcards.

−Xlist
−−exclude−directories=list

Specify a comma-separated list
of directories you wish to exclude from download. Elements
of list may contain wildcards.

−np

−−no−parent

Do not ever ascend to the
parent directory when retrieving recursively. This is a
useful option, since it guarantees that only the files
below a certain hierarchy will be downloaded.

Wget supports
proxies for both HTTP and FTP
retrievals. The standard way to specify proxy location,
which Wget recognizes, is using the following environment
variables:
http_proxy
https_proxy

If set, the http_proxy
and https_proxy variables should contain the URLs of
the proxies for HTTP and HTTPS
connections respectively.

ftp_proxy

This variable should contain
the URL of the proxy for FTP
connections. It is quite common that http_proxy and
ftp_proxy are set to the same URL.

no_proxy

This variable should contain a
comma-separated list of domain extensions proxy should
not be used for. For instance, if the value of
no_proxy is .mit.edu, proxy will not be used
to retrieve documents from MIT.

With the
exceptions of 0 and 1, the lower-numbered exit codes take
precedence over higher-numbered ones, when multiple types of
errors are encountered.

In versions of
Wget prior to 1.12, Wget’s exit status tended to be
unhelpful and inconsistent. Recursive downloads would
virtually always return 0 (success), regardless of any
issues encountered, and non-recursive fetches only returned
the status corresponding to the most recently-attempted
download.

Before actually
submitting a bug report, please try to follow a few simple
guidelines.

1.

Please try to ascertain that the behavior you see really
is a bug. If Wget crashes, it’s a bug. If Wget does
not behave as documented, it’s a bug. If things work
strange, but you are not sure about the way they are
supposed to work, it might well be a bug, but you might want
to double-check the documentation and the mailing lists.

2.

Try to repeat the bug in as simple circumstances as
possible. E.g. if Wget crashes while downloading wget
−rl0 −kKE −t5 −−no−proxy
http://example.com −o /tmp/log, you should try to
see if the crash is repeatable, and if will occur with a
simpler set of options. You might even try to start the
download at the page where the crash occurred to see if that
page somehow triggered the crash.

Also, while I
will probably be interested to know the contents of your
.wgetrc file, just dumping it into the debug message
is probably a bad idea. Instead, you should first try to see
if the bug repeats with .wgetrc moved out of the way.
Only if it turns out that .wgetrc settings affect the
bug, mail me the relevant parts of the file.

3.

Please start Wget with
−d option and send us the resulting output (or
relevant parts thereof). If Wget was compiled without debug
support, recompile it−−−it is much
easier to trace bugs with debug support on.

Note: please
make sure to remove any potentially sensitive information
from the debug log before sending it to the bug address. The
"−d" won’t go out of its way
to collect sensitive information, but the log will
contain a fairly complete transcript of Wget’s
communication with the server, which may include passwords
and pieces of downloaded data. Since the bug address is
publically archived, you may assume that all bug reports are
visible to the public.

4.

If Wget has crashed, try to run
it in a debugger, e.g. "gdb `which wget`
core" and type "where" to get
the backtrace. This may not work if the system administrator
has disabled core files, but it is safe to try.

This is
not the complete manual for GNU Wget.
For more complete information, including more detailed
explanations of some of the options, and a number of
commands available for use with .wgetrc files and the
−e option, see the GNU Info
entry for wget.

Permission is
granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document
under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation
License, Version 1.3 or any later version published by the
Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, with
no Front-Cover Texts, and with no Back-Cover Texts. A copy
of the license is included in the section entitled "
GNU Free Documentation License".